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eldavojohn writes "The apocalyptic film 2012 has dominated the box office, taking in $65 million on opening weekend. But with all those uninformed eyeballs watching the film, NASA has found itself answering so many common questions that their Ask an Astrobiologist blog offers calming, professional reassurance that there is no planet Nibiru, nor will it collide with Earth (although I do recall a massive solar storm forecast). NASA's main site even offers a FAQ answering similar questions. NPR has more on NASA scientist David Morrison and his efforts to calm the ensuing public hysteria, but survivalists are already planning for the big one. Pretty funny, right? Not according to Morrison: 'I've had three from young people saying they were contemplating committing suicide. I've had two from women contemplating killing their children and themselves. I had one last week from a person who said, "I'm so scared, my only friend is my little dog. When should I put it to sleep so it won't suffer?" And I don't know how to answer those questions.'"

I think that's what the suicide offers are for - to reduce the number of stupid people. Seems like a naturally self-correcting system to me. I say let it run its course. Next thing we will have 10foot disclaimers on the entrance to cinemas telling the dumb masses that its just pretend.

"'I've had three from young people saying they were contemplating committing suicide. I've had two from women contemplating killing their children and themselves. I had one last week from a person who said, "I'm so scared, my only friend is my little dog. When should I put it to sleep so it won't suffer?"

You know...this didn't really bother me or grab my attention THAT much, till I read that last one about the guy putting his dog down.

Notice that in movie trailers whenever the death of an animal is implied [traileraddict.com] (@ 1:34), they specifically show that it turns out the animal is alive, of course, in the same trailer they can kill oodles of humans. They go out of their way to show the animal is alive despite the fact that it can take away from the joke and waste precious 'trailer' time.

Children not having anything to do with the concept of innocence... right.

As someone who still remembers his childhood, I'd like to point out that children are indeed inocent - which means that they are the closest things to demons this side of Hell, torturing other people for fun without even a hint of guilt or conscience. Sure, they are a joy to be around if you're adult and thus superior in power, but absolute horrors otherwise.

The same is true of animals, of course - a dog can be absolutely loyal to it

I think that's what the suicide offers are for - to reduce the number of stupid people.

"Ignorant" is not the same as "stupid", and can be cured by means much less dramatic than death.

The problem is that we don't train people in the fine art of bullshit detection -- mostly because doing so would challenge mainstream religions, not to mention most American's understanding of their nation's history and place in the world. When you've got a culture where many people take ancient Hebrew creation myths as true and are not laughed at, it's no surprise that belief in the imminent destruction of Earth by collision with the rogue planet Nibiru will proliferate.

Honestly, these people see 'Transformers', 'Superman', 'Batman', 'Star Trek', 'Dogma', 'Godzilla', and '2012'. Then they choose to believe the world is ending but they won't be saved by Superman or Batman. They won't be killed first by giant robots or a giant lizard. And angels and demons... well ok they probably do believe in Dogma.

Actually these people probably already have a mental problem and fear the world is ending BEFORE seeing 2012. Seeing the movie just gives them an excuse to bring it out.Why else would they choose this one as the real one?

Personally, I choose to believe in 'The Last Starfighter'. I am practicing, Centauri, I'm practicing...

"Ignorant" is not the same as "stupid", and can be cured by means much less dramatic than death.

In this case it is exactly the same.

These reports did not come from some long overlooked rainforest tribe, but rather from people intelligent enough to call NASA with worries and fears. These are people able to read or at least watch TV news, or surf the net.

The chance of educating these people is slim to none. The recidivism rate of stupidity is astoundingly high. The success stories few and fleeting.

No one wants to wake up on December 24th to watch their dim witted neighbor's body being carried from the next apartment due to hysteria induced suicide.

But by the same token, no one wants to hand-hold these people thru every motion picture release based on a misinterpretation of a calendar developed by people who never invented the wheel and who's year had only 360 days.

The problem is that we don't train people in the fine art of bullshit detection

99.99% of Christians are not going to fear Nibiru after watching 2012, so it's only fair to distinguish between them and the people Morrison is talking about. You must realize, he is fielding questions from a population of millions of people, some significant percentage of whom are literally psychotic (which actually means losing touch with reality, not being an axe murderer). This "idiocracy" meme (that the masses are stupid and we are the smart ones) is just ego stroking - don't feel good just because you're more sane than the bottom 0.001% who are off their meds.

"And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter." (Revelation 8:10, 11 - KJB).

I did that, but apparently theres a mention of a "star called wormwood which will fall into the sea"

[facepalm]

I agree.

[facepalm].

The problem is that we don't train people in the fine art of bullshit detection -- mostly because doing so would challenge mainstream religions

"The problem is that we don't train people in the fine art of critical thinking -- mostly because doing so would challenge the intellectually lazy's of mainstream religions"

As a Christian, I frequently mentally (and sometimes physically) [facepalm] when talking with other religious people.

-Young earth creationists

-Militant anti-evolutionists

-God gave us the earth so anything we do to it must be His will

-That person doesn't believe the same things as me so they must be going to hell

-That person sins, so I'm justified in hating/judging/ostracizing them

-etc. etc. etc.

These aren't the markings of a religious person or mainstream religion in general and it is dishonest to attribute these kinds of things to everyone who is religious . These are merely are the markings of those who have failed to have an open mind and apply reason and logic to their faith. These kinds of people are more concerned about being right than what's right. And what's more condemning to them is that they are more concerned about being right than they are in following the core tenants of their faith to show charity and compassion towards their fellow men.

On the flip side, what further bruises my forehead is when I see a person or group of people who have faith in God do adjust their beliefs to new evidence they see while still holding on to elements of their faith they see as still consistent with that evidence and they are ridiculed for doing so by others claiming to be critical thinkers. Why would such a person attack the essence of the scientific method, namely the adjustment of theories against evidence? The answer is too often that, although they'd like to think otherwise, those who attack people simply for having (or not having) faith in God fear what they don't understand and thus feel the need to tear down it. It's our nasty primal instinct kicking in. Take away the fear and replace it empathy and understanding of why people choose (or don't choose) to have faith in God, and the desire to attack, belittle, or demean will go away on both sides.

Dude this is slashdot, if you mention Christianity the readers just substitute "ignorant masses". You have to stick to certain rules in this forum. It is the fad of our culture right now to Christian bash, after all they are not as good as the rest of humanity, they are just silly ignorant people who are a plague on society that need to be dealt with.

According to/.ers there is no rational in believing in any God, but it is ok to say you are part of any religion as long as it isn't one related to Judaism.

yeah, but to calm any fears of the end times, remind them that Jesus said that they "would come like a thief in the night" (1 Thess 5:2). If anyone is expecting it, that is exactly not the time it is going to happen. If people have predicted that 2012 will be the end for hundreds of years, then I imagine that means it has one of the lowest probabilities of happening - the bible doesn't lie.

Or just show them this re-edit of the 2012 trailer: link [youtube.com]. It's pretty much impossible to take the film seriously after seeing that. (Assuming you were inclined to take the film seriously in the first place).

Okay, let's round up all the people that believe 2012 [imdb.com] is in any way related to actual scientific fact, and let them go see The Invention of Lying [imdb.com]. If they don't get the coincidence, explain to them it already is 2012 according to the Gregorian calendar...

That show has some REALLY bad science in it at times. For instance, one episode discussed the "myth" (rather old wives saying) that with breakfast cereal (the american kind) the cardboard box it comes in contains more NUTRITION then the cereal itself.

The amazing mythbusters then went on to determine the CALORIE/ENERGY and FAT contents of both products. Do Americans REALLY need more CALORIES or FAT in their diets? Not once did they test EITHER of the products for NUTRITIONAL values, as in minerals/vitamins etc. They proved that sugar coated grain gives you energy. No shit sherlock. Your MOTHER is talking about nutrition as you find it in fresh vegetables, and fruit. Not a sugar cube or lump of butter.

And yet many here at slashdot consider mythbusters as valid science and often quote their results to prove how silly a myth is.

I seen another show where helicopters were discussed and the claim was made that helicopters do not have ejection seats. Correct. US helicopters do not, SOVIET helicopters did. How many believe a lie because they thought a documentary was a documentary?

The truth, the real absolute, total and complete truth is not good entertainment and does not fit in a soundbite or between commercial blocks.

And the truth is hard to understand because you need to understand an lot of complex subjects that you actually need to spend some time thinking about.

What IS the mayan calendar and why is 2012 significant and as mentioned in the article is that different then 31st december 2009? If you don't understand WHAT a date really is, how time is tracked, then you COULD think 31st december 9999 would be an ending (which is rougly what 2012 is to the mayans). Silly if you TRULY understand calendars, numbers and such but many don't.

For many people, magical thinking fills in the gaps between their understanding of the world and a LOT of us do it. Come one, be honest how much of your understanding of gravity is a rubber sheet with a weight on it? There is no rubber sheet, that is magical thinking to help your limited intelligence deal with the concepts thought up by truly brilliant people.

So, don't be to condescending, you are no Einstein.

Our world is filled with half lies to explain things away because explaining everything to everyone would explode the education system and not help getting the bloody toilets cleaned and garbage collected and even peoples wounds dressed.

A simple story: In africa there used to be a believe that if you used a cooking stick twice, evil demons would posses it. White missionaries said this was silly superstition and forbid this practice. people soon dropped dead. Why? The evil spirit called food poisoning. This is LESS of an issue in colder climates like europe, but in the hot african sun food spoils far more rapidly.Oh, the story might not be true, but the gist of it is that sometimes "magical thinking" fills a gap between knowing that something is true and knowing the reason behind it.

But we humans ain't perfect and we all can't spent all our time reading books. These people heard something, didn't understand it and nobody is willing to clearly explain it and then there are stations like Fox that even add to the fear mongering for their own gains. Hell even Discovery and National Geographic are happy to host a "lets scare people" show to get ratings. How are people to know the full truth when the lies are sold so much better?

I think what NASA is doing is the right thing, but they should do it more clearly and get someone like Carl Sagan, someone who can talk plain english to explain it on tv on popular chat shows. SHOW people. Don't hide in the ivory tower sneering down, come out with the science. People LOVE science, but you need to open up to them, not by talking down to them, but by starting easy and then pulling them up. Why do you Einstein is such a celebrity? Because HE could do that. Few can. Certainly not most people here.

You know if people are so stupid that they watch a movie and think that its, really going to happen, to the point that they are going to commit suicide, I say let them. we definitely don't need any more stupid people on this planet.

Whatever the genetic component of intelligence may be, it is clear that environment and education make a huge difference. These kids would end up a lot smarter simply by being brought up by someone other than their stupid bitch of a mother.

Yeah, so if you run into one of these idiots, and she happens to be cute, just tell her that you are a Mao Shan master [theregister.co.uk] and you know the perfect ceremony to stop Nibiru from hitting the Earth, if you could just get a little help from her...

A friend of mine is taking an Arky (Archaeology for those less hip) Class, as she is an ancient & medieval history major, and she is taking a class this semester SPECIFICALLY on the Mayans. Her Prof is one of the archaelogists who work on sites like Tucan. The prof held an open public lecture in the University of Calgary in the first week of November here. My friend and I both attended, and while I never did believe in the whole Mayan Myth it's interesting to see where its origins begin.

So this prof is basically a Mayan pro, she can translate most inscriptions just by looking at them (no reference needed) and she intimately understands their number and Calendar system. The first thing to know about Mayan numbers is that they don't use Base 10, they use base 20. The other thing to know is that there is not ONE Mayan Language. They were similar to all of Europe, where the europeans had french, English, spanish, german, etc, the Mayans had about 6 to 8 different Variants. And with that in mind, they were never a single nation, each city had it's own king/queen type leader, and they peacably would trade with the other cities of the area. No one city was truly the capital, but those major trade hubs and those with rarer goods tended to prosper more than the little towns.

Anyways, so the Mayans used 2 different Calendars, and I can't remember how big, but there was a sizable gap in between the usage of each (I think like 800 years?). But basically what it breaks down into is the Short count and the Long count.

The Short count is very much like our Calendar today, 18 months of 20 days each with 5 days at the end of the year for some religious purpose (Similar to the egyptians). They also had Names for days of their week, like Monday Tuesday Wednesday (Except Mayan Gods instead of Norse Gods). So if I were to say, Friday, December 25th, you'd know I mean this Christmas and not last Christmas or the next Christmas because they don't land on a Friday. This works well for 8 years until Christmas lands on a Friday again. You could be more precise about the date if you gave me the year, which is where the Long Count comes in.

We attribute a year to 365 days. So I would say that Dec 31 2009 would be day 733285. The Mayans didn't use years, they merely counted days. Which is neat in some ways because there were 20 days in a month (And they're number system is base 20, remember?) But also a bit of a hassle in others, because there are 18 months.

So the way Archaeologists expressed their long count is in a series of numbers seperated by decimals (It looks like a long IP Address to me). Day 1 would be like 0.0.0.0.0.1 and Day 23 would be like 0.0.0.2.3 - - Except here's the kicker - Mayans didn't set day 0 as anything in particular. In fact, their creation story takes place well after 0. This leads many people to believe that the Mayans set a date in the future as some signifigance and worked their way backwards. What day that could be or what they believed it would be has yet to be discovered. There are some speculations. No, its not 2012.

Essentially the numbers further to the left represent longer periods of time, so each 1.0.0.0.0 in the long count is really like 8767 years give or take, which is a really long friggen time, right? We celebrate every year pretty much, but every odd once in a while we hold huge celebrations, like when we ushered in the new millenia in the year 2000. That sort of thing was also important to the Mayans. If I recall correctly, we're roughly around the 13.0.19.0.0 era on the Mayan Calendar. So when it rolls around to be 13.1.0.0.0 - wouldn't that be a rollover worth celebrating? To the Mayans it would be. Guess what day that happens to fall on? You're right, December 21 2012.

So now that you've got a crash course on the Calendar and how it works, where exactly does the Prophecy come in? I'll tell you. Amongst the ruins of cities, Mayans had what we call Stelas. They are basically big stones which have stories and such carved into them, very much like a monu

There is no real planetary Alignment scheduled for Dec 21, 2012, which the Movie shows as the Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, etc, all being PERFECTLY in line. Yeah no, not going to happen.

As for the whole, Earth, and one of the constellations making a perfect line with the "Dark Rift" - Yes, that IS scheduled to happen! But guess how rare it is? It happened in 2008, and 2004, and 2000... and you get the idea. Its not very rare at all.

The economy is in a shambles and you need a job. You respond with "The FSM will return on Dec 24, 2012 and your death will be more horrible than you can imagine. The only way to prevent this fate is to kill yourself, preferably by drowning in a bowl of spagettios."

No NASA should respond with "Yes it's real and we need $1 trillion in funding to determine how to stop it" and then spend that on real research.

That's awesome. And then in 2013 when the public goes "Hey, you took that $1 trillion and built a space station and a moon base and a bunch of rockets and solar power stations and telescopes and rovers and stuff, when you were supposed to be preventing the end of the world!"

And NASA can say "What do you think all that stuff was for? It worked, didn't it?"

Or just do what Penn & Teller did. Offer "2012 Reverse Mortgages". To paraphrase, "We'll give you a bunch of money to spend on whatever hedonism you like for the next 2 years, and in 2013, in the infinitesimal chance that it's still standing and we're still alive to claim it, we take your house!"

Quote: "Some listeners heard only a portion of the broadcast, and in the atmosphere of tension and anxiety leading to World War II, took it to be a news broadcast. Newspapers reported that panic ensued, people fleeing the area, others thinking they could smell poison gas or could see flashes of lightning in the distance."

In the case of The War of the Worlds, the radio broadcast WAS designed to sound "real", complete with interrupting musical programs for special announcements and so on. Someone who tuned in in the middle of the show would have missed the announcement that it was just a radio program, and it predated the transistor radio by a decade so most of the people who decided to flee or whatever wouldn't have had a way to keep up with the program and hear any other announcements that they were listening to a fictional story.

The problem isn't people watching the movie 2012, it is the viral advertising surrounding it. They ran ads that made the movie sound a dramatization of a real idea rather than complete fiction, ala the Day After Tomorrow, and encourage them to search the web for the "real truth". The studio created a fake website purposing to be a scientific institute predicting a collision with earth in 2012. On top of this loonies have been talking about a 2012 apocalypse of some sort since we first understood the Mayan calendar, and latter some of them latched onto the Nimbiru idea after the books came out, so the internet is full of websites giving "evidence" of this catastrophe, many of whom claim to be scientific websites themselves.

Yeah, people with a decent bullshit detector should be able to figure out that this is all crap, but it's not like they just watched a normal movie and thought it was read - the studio is trying to present it as though it were real, by making it a conspiracy that the mainstream is covering up.

I've had two from women contemplating killing their children and themselves

You tell them to come in, explaining that you have a secret rocket that will take some of us off of this planet. When they arrive, you have social services take the kids away and the police can take her to the nearest asylum for the criminally insane.

This is the first film I've worked on that caused actual general panic. Grudge 2 scared people, but it's actually a little gratifying to think that work I did is scaring people even AFTER they walked out of the theater. At the time we were making it I knew the whole black president/conspiracy thing was definitely going to push a lot of buttons, just considering the way things are right now, but to be honest, the whole scientific backstory of the film is so thin I never actually considered that people would genuinely fear a cataclysm as depicted in the movie. "Mutating neutrinos"... really?

ps. I was the lead sound effects editor on the show. Along with blowing up Yellowstone and other sundry destructions, I personally cut about 80% of the computer screen beeps. And I cut every one of them just for you guys, because I know you love them so much:D

I won't see the movie immediately, but I'll pre-emptively say that the beeps were entirely unnecessary, inappropriate, or plain impossible, and no programmer worth their salt would make an interface that noisy. But I'm sure you were just following orders. You know who else was just following orders?

Seriously, I'm going to see it just for the beeps now, cos I'm intrigued how an informed person would accomplish this task as opposed to the mindless goons who think they know how computers work.

You put the beeps in for the same reason the male actors wear makeup, and scenes at night always are in blue light. It's a convention. If you make things blink on a 100 foot projection screen and they don't make a sound, people's get distracted by the absence somehow.

As someone who does this for a living but also is a hobbyist Objective-C/Cocoa/Ruby developer, I do find myself thinking about whether the beeps are triggered by key events, or if they should be emanating from windowserver, and we absolutely

but to be honest, the whole scientific backstory of the film is so thin I never actually considered that people would genuinely fear a cataclysm as depicted in the movie. "Mutating neutrinos"... really?

Yeah, I can't even hate you for working on it, nor the producers et al for creating it. It's just a movie, after all, so you don't fall into anything like the same class as the people who are promoting the 2012 thing as fact for their own benefit.

Yeah, I can't even hate you for working on it, nor the producers et al for creating it. It's just a movie, after all, so you don't fall into anything like the same class as the people who are promoting the 2012 thing as fact for their own benefit.

I always saw the whole "destruction of the world" as sortof an excuse to have a movie about a "conspiracy to save humanity." The interesting part of the movie isn't necessarily how Los Angeles is destroyed as much as why people in government and in echelons of th

Well, that does occur in nature. Neutrinos emanating from our sun change type on the way here. Until a few years ago this was not known. The missing neutrino count from the sun (compared to theoretical predictions) was a big mystery in astrophysics, which is now explained by neutrinos changing type.

Consider seeing it in Dolby Digital:) I don't get any more money either way, but seeing it at the $3 theater is almost worse than seeing it at home. Movies like this don't really work unless you're being actually pummeled by the sound and projection.

Just as a foot note, the Mayan's equate the end of their calendar as like December 31st. The calendar just starts over.

Just as a footnote to your footnote, the only character in the movie who relates the end-of-the-world to the Mayans is a complete nutjob (played very well by Woody Harrelson). The rest of the cast is much too busy running and screaming and dying to worry much about the Mayans' prophetic ability.

The first assistant to the Key Grip, who is the head of the grip department. These are guys that pick up and carry things around, like a film's 24-hour staff moving service -- film equipment, sets, props and photographic equipment are often bulky and unweildy. The best boy grip's main job is to sit at the truck and keep inventory on all of the gear, make sure the grips show up on time, make sure nothing is broken and repairs get done, etc.

Yeah, oh well. I added them, and then the re-recording mixer tossed out gobs of them, circle of life.

"Cut" means I added it, in the sense that "I found these sounds in the library and then I 'cut' them so that they would sync up with the picture." Something about CGI special effects is that if you used the literal on-set sound of every shot in the movie, 2012 would be about 50% dialogue, 50% render farm fan hum.

What's wierd is it's the same chucka-chucka you hear in Alien when the Nostromo computer receives new orders, and it also pops up in various parts of Brazil, The Black Hole, Logan's Run etc. I think it's an old Bernoulli drive or some kind of dishwasher hard disk. You can hear what we're talking about it on the Amazon.com website, just audition track 1 of the Blade Runner soundtrack.

It has been brought to my attention that people think I cut beeps out of the movie, based on the common English interpretation of the verb 'to cut.' I probably should have made it clear that I cut them "into" the movie, in accordance with the idiomatic Hollywood usage of the phrase. We apologize for the inconvenience. Flame on.

There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they Do... Not... Know about it!

Lots of people have commented on how incredibly stupid these people are. I don't think it's quite that simple.

I think that they're just scared. There's so much fear in our culture, people are scared of health care, scared of a black president, scared of terrorists, scared of oil prices, scared of cell phone companies, scared of pirates (the Somalian kind), scared of pirates (the MPAA kind), scared of the RIAA and MPAA, scared of swine flu, scared of unemployment, scared of having a job that doesn't pay a living wage, scared of peanuts, scared of global warming, scared of pollution, scared of home invasions, scared of floods, earthquakes and fires, scared of nuts with guns, scared of the government taking away everyone's guns.

Fear makes you irrational. It suppresses the "carefully think about the situation" part of your brain, and supercharges the "fight or flight" part. If people stopped to think rationally about it, they would realize it is fiction. But the fear prevents them from thinking rationally.

We live in a constant state of fear, and our culture (or our media, depending on how you look at it) keeps giving us more reasons to be afraid.

What we need is more reason to be hopeful, not fearful. If we remove the irrational fears about health care, presidents, terrorists, MPAA, pirates, global warming, etc., then we would also have fewer irrational fears about the planet Nimbus crashing into Earth on December 21st, 2012.

This kind of thing is actually a documented mental illness (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1151359 [nih.gov] among others). It began with The Exorcist leading to a bunch of people suddenly, literally, living in fear of their lives of being possessed by the devil. Later people watching Jaws, including some people living in Kansas far from any body of water that could reasonably contain a shark, became so afraid of shark attacks that they couldn't leave their homes. It doesn't happen often, but for those afflicted it can apparently be almost completely debilitating.

"Well its 2009, and the world ends in 2012, so if we take one number, 2009 and subtract it from 2012 you get the number 3. Its called math. So you should kill yourself in about 3 years. If you want to get really accurate, you could look at a calender and see what month it is, and what day, and really work out exactly when to do it! Either way, it isn't for awhile and your probably likely to die drowning looking up during a rain storm before that, so leave me alone..."

alternate alternate alternate ending:

"Don't worry about it we will be hit by a meteor or a comet long before then!"

As an aside I have also heard that this Mayan 2012 prediction is all buffoonery. They Mayans thought their the world would end just like we think the world ends after December. It was their calender for keeping track of time. I think it was implied that you just restart the calender once the cycle is over. Perhaps it is so implisit that they didn't feel the need to explain this just the same we don't put a sticker on every calender we ever make that says "Not to worry, world not ending, new calender next year!"

I've been noticing a lot of these "NASA Calms 2012 Fears" articles in the last few days, enough that it makes it sound like there's more of a story here than I think there really is. The real question is, how many people are actually worried about this? I'm guessing that it's a tiny number, and probably what happened is, a statistical blip caused a few of the crazier ones to contact NASA. So then he posts on the blog about it, and for some reason a lot of places pick up the story.

You know plenty of people laugh at the superstitions of people in the Dark Ages, but science as we know it, didn't exist then. I mean Aristotle had some great ideas, but there was little or nothing to take the place of raw superstition until about the 13th or 14th century (at least in the West).

But what is peoples' excuse today? How is it that people who presumably graduated from the American educational system are no better off than some dirt-farming peasant from barbarian times? Things weren't always this bad. If I had the choice of hiring someone with a high school education from 1909 or someone with a high school education from 2009, I'd choose the 1909 person, and 90% of the time I'd be better off.

But of course or education system is fine, it just needs more money thrown at it.

Why is the taxpayer's money being spent on this nonsense? What's next? Scientific evidence, that there is no Santa Claus? That black cats crossing your path do not cause "bad luck" (whatever that is)?

It's a blog post and a FAQ. That's it. No probe to prove there is no planet Nibiru, no expensive mission. Are you really worried that one man probably spent a few days writing this up?

Frankly, I thought it was nice to hear that a NASA scientist is working to take the time to respond to a worried public and trying to minimize that time by having an informative page. When I was a kid, I wrote to NASA from Minnesota all the time. Every single time they responded. I still have fact sheets on all of their shuttle craft in my parent's closet. I read those things over and over trying to imagine how someone could come up with such amazing machines. Go ahead, spend a few minutes to hand write them a letter, you might be surprised with the response:

And if you came here to complain that NASA wastes tax payer money, you're in the wrong place. NASA's budget is about half of one percent of the Federal budget [wikipedia.org]--don't even get me started on what our defense budget comes out to be. That's a ridiculously low amount of money for an agency that's charged with a major component of our future and probably the whole future of the Earth and its inhabitants.

Your subject confuses me further... what exactly are you implying these questions and blog are strawmen for?

Mi is a hard core anti-government libertarian. For him, there is no excuse to thin to turn into an opportunity to bash the government. He's one of those people who think government can never, ever do anything good. If it looks good, you aren't looking hard enough. To people like Mi, NASA is just socialism for scientists and engineers who should be working in private industry.

Almost no stupidity or suicidal tendancies are hereditary. Most mental disabilities are caused by accident or disease. A very large number of children are born every day with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome to (other then being alcoholics) perfectly sane, normal, intelligent people. The "Darwin Award" is pure bullshit; evolution doesn't work like that.

If a stupid woman has fifteen kids and ten die, and you have never had sex, she won the Darwin game and you are its loser.

I'm sorry, you're concerned about the PLOT of a disaster movie? The plot. Of a disaster movie. Stay where you are, the people who are arriving shortly are there to help you. They are bringing you shiny things.

Complete spoiler: Something scientifically impossible happens. Lots of people die and the laws of physics are apparently among the first casualties. Lots more people die. A few people suffer terrible injuries but somehow recover miraculously and are therefore immunized against death for the rem